


Into Warmth

by rufeepeach



Series: Contact [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Dog!Rumple, F/M, Fluff, dog!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-23 02:00:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6101113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufeepeach/pseuds/rufeepeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After he returns to his true form, Rumplestiltskin avoids his maid at all costs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into Warmth

Rumpelstiltskin was never what anyone might call ‘approachable’.

As a boy he had always been the quiet, sensitive sort of lad no one had any time for. He’d enjoyed spinning, the few books his aunts could afford to bring home with them when they had coin to spare, and asked a few too many questions when comfortable enough to speak at all. As a youth little changed, save he became more aware that his father’s reputation clung to him like a toxic cloud, warning away even those who might otherwise have befriended the poor, quiet ward of two eccentric spinners.

After the war, the word ‘coward’ had kept everyone at bay. He’d retreated into himself even more, deeper and deeper, until the curse came along and sealed him in for good. After that, only Baelfire had ever been unafraid to come near, to touch him, to speak his mind… and even that had been lost in the end.

No one approached the Dark One without a deal in mind, and when they did it was the monster they sought, the fearsome creature of magic and promise, rather than whatever man there was left within. They kept their distance, shrank away when he danced close, and it had become almost comforting in its predictability. Rumpelstiltskin hadn’t been touched in so long that he had come to believe he didn’t want to be touched.

The exception, of course, came as a sudden slip of a girl in periwinkle blue with chestnut curls. Belle had never held back; Belle didn’t seem to notice the walls, the wards, the utter unapproachability that kept the rest of the world at bay and always had. And that had been enough, more than enough: to have her near, to have her come close and withdraw, like a moth to a flame. That had been more than he had ever felt he deserved, the fragile peace that had descended over his life, the light flickering at its stained, blackened edges.

Then he had gone and pissed off the wrong forest spirit. He'd been cocky, and somehow she’d made a transfiguration spell subtle and strong enough to take root deep enough in him to evade the Curse’s control, and render him temporarily powerless.

Not to mention furry, two feet tall, and four-legged, albeit one of them scarred with his old injury.

He should have known the spirit was more than the simple tree soul it had appeared to be. The Lady of the Forest was a creature created by an ancient curse herself, summoned to serve as patron of the werewolves who dwelled within her trees. Of course she’d turn him into a dog when she refused to break her curse, foul-tempered, unpredictable harpy that she was. But his other option was to agree to the bargain she’d tried to strike in return for a particularly powerful wand, and bear the price of three thousand restored souls.

Rumpelstiltskin was greedy and powerful; he wasn’t stupid.

Three days in a snowstorm it had taken him to limp home through the mountain pass to his own front door. Thank God his little maid had been reading near the main door, and heard his howling. To freeze to death as a sodden mutt on his own front doorstep would have been an ignominious death to say the least, even before one considered that he’d have failed to find Bae, or the repercussions for the Dark One itself.

He’d never expected Belle to let him in: he’d made it quite clear she wasn’t to go adopting injured baby birds or motherless kittens, her compassionate heart making such a rule necessary. She should have thrown him a blanket and maybe a lesser chop of meat, and let him sleep under the awning.

Instead, she’d welcomed him into the main hall.

He’d assumed then that she knew full well who he was, and would either abuse the knowledge mercilessly by forcing him to sleep in the same dungeon he’d dubbed ‘her room’ the first week she stayed with him, or that she’d ignore him entirely. He’d been stunned – and suspicious of poison or other such trickery – when she’d instead fetched him food and a cushion by the fire, and allowed him to protect himself beneath the great table. He’d been more animal than man, in that moment, and couldn’t believe she didn’t mean him ill. He was injured, after all, and helpless, and for the first time since he’d known her she held the entire balance of power.

But Belle – sweet, kind, brave, clever Belle – had done no such thing. In one night she had proven herself the antithesis of every other person he’d known in three hundred years: she had fed him, comforted him, warmed him, dried him, and then treated his injury, and never expected any return at all. Were he a true wild dog he could have bitten her and killed her with injury, attacked her and ripped her throat out. She either didn’t know or didn’t care for the danger, and for all he wanted to sneer at her naiveté he knew she was neither naïve nor stupid.

She was just… kind, good and compassionate in a way he’d never expected, her soul not diminished or tarnished from their association but instead burnished in some way, as if knowing him and strengthened her opposing light rather than drowning it in darkness.

She’d allowed him to fall asleep with his head in her lap: his first long night’s sleep in three hundred years. He’d been nestled, safe and warm in her skirts. She smelled of vanilla, roses, and old books, and with her hand gently resting on his head, he’d never felt so safe.

And then he’d awoken as himself, the instincts of the dog banished to the back of his mind as his true self regained control, and he’d vanished without a word to her. Belle had slept on, oblivious to his change back. Rumpelstiltskin had paced his workroom, and tried to work out how this had happened.

Obviously she’d never have allowed such liberties if she’d been aware of his true identity. That was not in dispute: no woman in her right mind would allow the Dark One to sleep with his head in her lap, or treat him with as much kindness as she’d shown last night. He looked down at the bandage she’d wrapped around his then-injured ankle, now healed with the return of his magic, and his head dropped. It had been so very, pathetically long since anyone had touched him with such sweet, tender intent: a lifetime; a hundred lifetimes; longer.

He craved it. It was weak, terrible, at odds with everything he knew of himself, but when he thought of her soft, small hands in his fur, her gentle eyes looking at him without fear but with kindness, with empathy rather than pity, he shuddered all over.

He stayed in his workroom for three straight days, avoiding Belle with a locked door and complete silence. For all she knew, after all, he hadn’t returned, and she never ventured up here. She didn’t know he was back, so he had all the time he needed to work out what to do next before he’d have to face her.

On the face of it, there was nothing he needed to do. She didn’t know he was the dog she’d cared for, and while she was probably confused as to where her new companion had vanished to, she couldn’t know it had been the master of the castle she’d nursed by the fire. Was it guilt, then, he wondered, that sat so uneasy in his belly when he remembered that night? Guilt that he’d taken advantage of her kindness to touch her, when he knew she’d never have consented if she’d known the truth?

It didn’t feel like guilt. It felt, in fact, suspiciously like desire, with a heavy tinge of loss. There was an itch between his shoulder blades he couldn’t ignore, an aching loneliness in his heart that was fresher and harder to disregard.

He needed to be touched. That was the conclusion he’d drawn after three days of pacing, of arguing with the suspicious demon in his head, and of trying to distract himself with anything else. No one had touched him since Cora, and she’d ended things with him over twenty years ago. He considered going to a whorehouse in a glamour, getting what he needed and then leaving, but as always the idea made his skin crawl. He had nothing but respect for women who made their living that way, but Rumpelstiltskin was at his weak heart a sentimental man, and the idea of paying a woman for a false smile sat uneasy with him.

Honesty, he almost laughed at the thought: he wanted an honest touch.

If he were truly being honest, he wanted Belle’s touch.

And that was why, after three days of these musings, he was trying to find a potion in any of his hundreds of magical tomes that could replicate the Lady’s spell. If he couldn’t have what he clearly needed in his own body, then it should be simple work to transform himself into a body that could.

The spell required three dog hairs, and he threw them into the cauldron with a flourish. Two more ingredients, and-

“Rumpelstiltskin?” Belle’s voice called from outside the workroom door, and he stiffened all over with shock. “Rumpelstiltskin, open the door!”

He considered for a long time just keeping his mouth shut and pretending he wasn’t in, allowing her to come to the conclusion that she’d misheard whatever had lead her to believe he was home.

“Rumple, I know you’re in there! You’ve been in there for three days straight, open the door!”

Rumpelstiltskin’s heart plummeted to his boots. She knew. Somehow, she knew. He looked at the cauldron with a certain disappointment, before he rallied. He didn’t know for certain she’d put all the pieces together. There was still a chance she thought the two things unrelated.

The door creaked open; Belle all but fell through.

“Thank you,” she sighed, as if out of breath. “I brought tea.”

“Perhaps lead with that, dearie,” he said, absently, trying to absorb himself in the spell as if she didn’t matter. “I’ll put up with unwanted visitors far easier when bribed with refreshments.”

She just gave him the unimpressed look he was getting to know all too well, and set her ubiquitous tea tray down on the spare table in the corner. “I thought about bringing milk and meat,” she said, with a casualness that caused his stomach to clench, all hope that she didn’t know dashed in that one sentence. “But then, I doubt you’d enjoy that in your usual form.”

“I haven’t the foggiest what you’re blathering on about, dearie,” he lied, and waved a condescending hand, “Off you trot.”

She stood with an eyebrow raised, her hands on her slender hips. He could see her out of the corner of his eye, but refused to grant her a full look. If she was going to humiliate him in his own workroom, he wouldn’t give her the benefit of eye contact.

“Rumple,” she said, gently. “It’s alright. I just… I wish you hadn’t felt you had to hide.”

“I’m not hiding, dearie,” he snarled, his hands clenched into claws on the bench. “I’m just trying to work. Surely when I returned home and didn’t speak with you, a smart girl like you could take a hint?”

“You’re hiding because you were cursed somehow, and are embarrassed you needed your maid’s help to patch you up,” she said. “And it’s ridiculous.”

“It was an ignominious position to be in,” he replied, testily, finally turning to face her. “Excuse me for not wishing to discuss such an unpleasant experience over tea and biscuits.”

“Unpleasant?” she asked, her voice a little softer, hesitant, less sure of itself. “I… I didn’t find it all that unpleasant. At least not… not after we fell asleep.”

He swallowed, hard, not knowing how to process that little titbit. She had known and wasn’t angry or mocking him? She wasn’t repulsed? The girl was clearly witless or deranged if that were true.

She crept closer; he could hear her feet on the floor. He didn’t move. He was paralysed by indecision, to throw her out, or to let her be: to face her and the consequences, or to vanish in a cloud of smoke like the coward he was.

She reached up a hand, an impossible, tender hand, and ran it through his hair. He shuddered all over, his whole being craving more, body singing with the contact of her fingers on his scalp.

He lashed out in a second, his fist gripping her wrist, keeping it captive and wrenching it away. “What do you think you’re doing?” he hissed, wretched and disbelieving, unable to follow her emotions, her thoughts, her logic.

“I… Rumpelstiltskin, please,” she breathed, her eyes wide and lost. “You keep me here all alone and you were gone for almost two weeks. I missed you.”

“Why?” he demanded. “Why in God’s name would you miss me?”

“You’re all I have here,” she told him. “You keep me isolated and I understand that, but I thought… I thought when we fell asleep together, we might have broken down a wall. You’re as lonely as I am, you have to be, and I thought we could at least do that for one another.”

She was lonely.

Of course she was: she was trapped here, alone with a monster, what woman wouldn’t be lonely. For a moment he hated her for that, for only wanting to know him because she had no other option. But then, he’d manufactured this situation, so he could hardly blame her for reacting to it. The hatred shifted back to where it belonged: on his shoulders. He was too weak to let her go, to be all alone again. He owed her the strength to at least compensate her for that.

And hadn’t he spent the past three days trying to resolve the very emotion she’d accused him of?

He released her hand, slowly, and lowered his claw back to his side. She held his gaze, her wide blue eyes searching his and finding no answers there. She was stunningly beautiful, he thought, gazing at her for as long as he did: he always forced himself to look away, but this time she held out as long as he did. Her face was shaped like a heart, all openness and fine bones, her mouth a soft, inviting red cupid’s bow, her eyes warm and full of intelligence empathy, and of longing for something he couldn’t imagine.

It was a face built for love, for joy and sweetness and discovery: strong and yet delicate, open and bright. And he, monster that he was, had trapped it here alone with him, jealous of a world that deserved her far more than he did.

She wanted to touch him; perhaps she wanted touch in return. In that moment, Rumpelstiltskin could deny her nothing.

Gently, oh so gently, her hand returned to his hair, and scratched him softly behind the ear, the same spot that had made him melt into her hands the night he’d been cursed. The effect was no less potent now – a hangover, perhaps – and she smiled softly as his eyes fluttered closed, pleasure and warmth rushing through him at the sensation of her fingertips lightly scratching his skin. She ran her hand through his hair again, and he arched into it this time, his skin tingling with every brush of her skin against his.

“You could sit, you know,” she said, tentatively, after a few minutes of this. “You have a nice big armchair right over there. We could…”

He nodded slowly, his eyes still closed, swallowing down his instinctive rejection of such weakness, acknowledging that this was exactly what he wanted. He could sit for a while with his head in her lap, and she wouldn’t reject him: she’d asked for this, after all.

She sat herself down in his armchair, and he settled on a cushion – the same cushion she’d set out for him last night, brought upstairs as a source of dog hair for the potion now sitting forgotten on the bench – and settled his head in her lap. Her hands returned to his hair, carding through the springy curls, teasing his scalp and picking through the occasional tangle.

“How old are you?” she asked, after a couple of long, wonderful silent minutes. “There are streaks of silver here I never noticed.”

“Three hundred and fifty or so, give or take,” he mumbled against her knee, his voice groggy with the drugging effect of her hands in his hair. It seemed her fingers could work miracles: he almost felt he could sleep. “I was fifty already when I became immortal.”

“Oh,” she murmured, and went back to her stroking, lulling him back into easy silence. “I like the silver,” she murmured, after another moment. “It adds gravitas.”

“Because the scales make me look like light like a fairy,” he muttered, sarcastically, and drew a surprised giggle from her lips. He smiled at the sound: her laugh was sunshine in sound.

“I’m just imagining you in one of those ridiculous jellyfish dresses,” she told him, making him chuckle too at the image.

“The neon colours would bring out my eyes,” he teased, and her giggles became fully-fledged laughter, her hands clenching pleasantly in his hair.

“Thank you,” she breathed, a few minutes later. She didn’t elaborate; she didn’t really need to.

“My pleasure, Belle,” he replied, and meant every word.


End file.
